Guild Wars 2

Biggest problem with the mega boss events is the same as all other events, they’re based 100% on damage done to the NPC. In normal dynamic events you’re not fighting the event, you’re fighting your fellow players in a game of tag. Dynamic event s is currently all about tagging NPC’s and getting the most possible loot, it doesn’t matter if you support other players, it’s currently a punishment to do any form of team play.

I think the way loot awards and medal/chest awards is given needs to be reworked completely, I’ll use the same example I’ve used for a while, On the centaur mega boss encounter I played my staff mesmer and spent most of my time removing conditions, giving out boons and most importantly getting probably 20-30 or even more players up from downed state, at the end I was likely more useful than someone just auto attacking the boss, yet I was given a bronze medal, a friend was given gold for auto attacking and going downed, then continuing auto attacking.

The game is currently too based on tagging mobs, if you’re in a party you should be awarded loot/chest/medals for what your group members do so you can do your role of support/condition remover. Feels like you’re punishing players with this “interactive” system because bots might abuse it, all other MMO’s I’ve played reward me loot if my party member kills a mob, even if I do not touch it, why doesn’t GW2?
This current system just promotes selfish greed and discourages team play.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Edited to add: This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

I loved these events during the beta days. Encounters took a few minutes to beat (could have been made a littler longer (5 minutes would be just right IMO)). Make them more anti-melee the more people are around, and give them tons of huge AoE (Frozen Maw from beta days comes to mind, I loved this guy, but in its current state he dies in 5 seconds…)

MeveM.7913:

Biggest problem with the mega boss events is the same as all other events, they’re based 100% on damage done to the NPC. In normal dynamic events you’re not fighting the event, you’re fighting your fellow players in a game of tag. Dynamic event s is currently all about tagging NPC’s and getting the most possible loot, it doesn’t matter if you support other players, it’s currently a punishment to do any form of team play.

-snip-

I don’t think it’s a good idea to require a group for more loot – it’s gw2s strenght that you don’t need grouping to play with other players. I agree about the tagging though, it’s a race against other players.

spontaneous idea: you also get the loot from mobs which died to someone, who gained one of your boons / was revived by you. This way supporting others would make sense.

I think bosses should have their own rules to conditions/boons so that supporting is required. Example: The Shatterer uses bleed attacks which do 3x more damage BUT they can be removed by a simple light-field. Or he has one attack which targetets all of the players (important: 5sec. telegraph) but you can avoid it by going into stealth. So thieves, mesmers etc will have an important function to throw down their stealth-fields. Anet: support the supporters.

offtopic: please add aoe-looting (a big bag with all the loot in the area opens and you can decide to take all / leave certain things behind, +add filters)

What if they added little events which had to be completed during these fights. Not sure if it would be possible to make them small instances?

Example:

SB – Have people actually enter the underworld portals to destroy some object instead of just attacking the portal(this could work with the maws portals also)

Worm – Have it eat people and have them fight from the inside.

Just simple things like having to build the bomb golems at the claw with scattered parts which are scattered across the entire map.

I think the fights get a lot more interesting when minions of the boss come run in and start slashing at the zerg. A good example here are the mobs at Tequatl. However, they made one mistake there imo: those mobs only take down the cannons, and then stay there, doing nothing. If after destroying the cannons they would walk to the people at Tequatl’s feet, and start a fight there, it would be alot more challenging and fun to me. Suddenly, it’s not all about walking to the boss’s feet and spamming 1 for 5 minutes, cause now if everyone did that the krait would come in and wipe people with their imba aoe.

There are various siege weapons at many of those encounters. Make them inactive at the start and require a DE that opens with the main event to get them battle-ready, and then make them do substantial damage but also be attacked so they need to be defended.

Make it possible to fail every event that also gives a bonus chest, regardless of attendance. That requires good scaling since right now fr example Jormag is rough at 5-10 people but faceroll with 20-30. The boss should be challenging no matter how many players are fighting it. For Jormag specifically make him direct attacks or minions at the camp leading the attack, and if the camp gets wiped out the pact retreats and the dragon directs the attacks that went to the camp at the players instead, making the encounter much harder and most likely to fail. That encourages players to defend the camp.

In general, I believe most world bosses simply needs to hit significantly harder. Golem MkII is a good example. If his smash attacks were a bit more unpredictable (capable of hitting all over the platform), and hit way harder (15-20k per smash on light armor) and his electricity hit for like 2-3k each tick, he would be a lot more intense and fun. As it is, there is simply no threat coming from many of the bosses. Shadow Behemoth suffers from the same problem. His aoe attacks are very weak, and barely do any damage.

my biggest issue, and it is not a huge problem for me, is the tendency for the big bosses to only have an active attack area in a cone shape in front of them. They (mostly) raise minions and have effects that do not cover a ‘big’ enough area.

Might I suggest instantly downing everyone when a dragon lands unless a dodge roll is executing? I want to see punishing mechanics!

Veldan.4637:

I think the fights get a lot more interesting when minions of the boss come run in and start slashing at the zerg. A good example here are the mobs at Tequatl. However, they made one mistake there imo: those mobs only take down the cannons, and then stay there, doing nothing. If after destroying the cannons they would walk to the people at Tequatl’s feet, and start a fight there, it would be alot more challenging and fun to me. Suddenly, it’s not all about walking to the boss’s feet and spamming 1 for 5 minutes, cause now if everyone did that the krait would come in and wipe people with their imba aoe.

The real fix there would be to make tequatl completely invulnerable until blasted by the cannon, and the cannon only charge while there are no mobs around. Meaning that the focus of the fight would be to keep the cannon clear of mobs, not simply slipping past the bone wall and pew-pew on.

There are a few things spawning around tequatl, knockdown tendrils and some kamikaze mobs, but they do not pose enough of a threat for the amount of people gathering. At least not out at the 1200 range.

Brewbeer.8239:

In general, I believe most world bosses simply needs to hit significantly harder. Golem MkII is a good example. If his smash attacks were a bit more unpredictable (capable of hitting all over the platform), and hit way harder (15-20k per smash on light armor) and his electricity hit for like 2-3k each tick, he would be a lot more intense and fun. As it is, there is simply no threat coming from many of the bosses. Shadow Behemoth suffers from the same problem. His aoe attacks are very weak, and barely do any damage.

Problem is that this punish the newbies in white and blue that show up at the starter zone events.

digiowl.9620:

Brewbeer.8239:

In general, I believe most world bosses simply needs to hit significantly harder. Golem MkII is a good example. If his smash attacks were a bit more unpredictable (capable of hitting all over the platform), and hit way harder (15-20k per smash on light armor) and his electricity hit for like 2-3k each tick, he would be a lot more intense and fun. As it is, there is simply no threat coming from many of the bosses. Shadow Behemoth suffers from the same problem. His aoe attacks are very weak, and barely do any damage.

Problem is that this punish the newbies in white and blue that show up at the starter zone events.

Well…it is a dragon after all. A DRAGON.

My main problem with a lot of these bosses is that they’re just the animated display of an environmental effect. They don’t target players, they’re just the source of effects to be avoided.
They feel disconnected from the world.
The worst offenders are the dragons. The best examples are probably the Orrian bosses, although even those aren’t perfect.

I never feel personally threatened by the dragons; it never feels like they’ve turned their baleful glare upon me and intend to end my existence. I just have to stand in the right spot and I’ll “Win”.

Grenth is probably the best designed meta event in the game at the moment. While it can be frustrating having to do it multiple times because people don’t know the “rules”, at least the priest can attack individuals.

I know it’s probably incredibly hard to do, but it would be great if the bodies of dragons were more physical objects, causing damage on collision with players. That way, we could see them swiping away swathes of people and crushing them with stomps.

Chopps.5047:

digiowl.9620:

Brewbeer.8239:

In general, I believe most world bosses simply needs to hit significantly harder. Golem MkII is a good example. If his smash attacks were a bit more unpredictable (capable of hitting all over the platform), and hit way harder (15-20k per smash on light armor) and his electricity hit for like 2-3k each tick, he would be a lot more intense and fun. As it is, there is simply no threat coming from many of the bosses. Shadow Behemoth suffers from the same problem. His aoe attacks are very weak, and barely do any damage.

Problem is that this punish the newbies in white and blue that show up at the starter zone events.

Well…it is a dragon after all. A DRAGON.

You did include Shadow Behemoth in that…

digiowl.9620:

Problem is that this punish the newbies in white and blue that show up at the starter zone events.

Those aren’t (shouldn’t) be that much weaker than 80s since the high level players get scaled down to the zone-level. If a lv.15 player and a downscaled lv.80 player were closer together in strength, defense…
1.) the developers would have a much easier job to balance those encounters
2.) player who want a challenge get a challenge
3.) no more overpowered players who complain about the easy bosses
4.) no more overpowered players who one-shot everything (80s are too strong, events are all about tag-races because mobs die too fast)
5.) boss-battles would last much longer and would feel more epic
6.) if difficult enough those boss-events finally have a according risk-reward mechanic and rewards could become better.

so basically: make the difference between a lv.80 and a lv.15player much smaller so that we get better loot & a better experience

There was a thread started on this subject a while back. It got moved to the graveyard, I mean the suggestions sub-forum.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/World-Bosses-need-to-be-Epic/first#post1640914

The dragons are a bit too stationary and less organic than they should be. They have teeth, claws, tails…let the beasts use them.
The mechanics are there. Warriors have charge and stomp/kick. Just take that mechanic and give it more force when the player gets hit with a dragon’s swipe.
If the player gets hit with a claw or teeth = bleeding stack applied. Let the dragons use their feet for a stomp that hits the player with a nice knockdown and some damage applied with the hit.
I like the idea of different parts of the dragon having health.
Let us whittle away at the dragons. A flying dragon means it can call upon it’s adds to attack the players. If it can fly try to damage the wings first so it doesn’t fly away and the adds can’t come in. Players will focus on removing/damaging the wings of the dragon first.
Now that it’s on the ground let it use the tail the teeth and the feet to damage.
If players focus on the head for damage then at a certain level the dragon becomes blinded and lands less of it’s hits. If the players focus on the feet the dragon no longer is able to use a stomp attack that sends the melee range players flying. If they focus on the tail it is damaged and falls off hence no more tail swipe maneuvers that could hurt players at range.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

digiowl.9620:

Problem is that this punish the newbies in white and blue that show up at the starter zone events.

Those aren’t (shouldn’t) be that much weaker than 80s since the high level players get scaled down to the zone-level. If a lv.15 player and a downscaled lv.80 player were closer together in strength, defense…
1.) the developers would have a much easier job to balance those encounters
2.) player who want a challenge get a challenge
3.) no more overpowered players who complain about the easy bosses
4.) no more overpowered players who one-shot everything (80s are too strong, events are all about tag-races because mobs die too fast)
5.) boss-battles would last much longer and would feel more epic
6.) if difficult enough those boss-events finally have a according risk-reward mechanic and rewards could become better.

so basically: make the difference between a lv.80 and a lv.15player much smaller so that we get better loot & a better experience

Rare is 40% above white, exotic 60%. Never mind that even downscaled you are 2 levels higher than the general level of the area. Meaning that you are running with stats up to 2.5 times the ones running with whatever they can buy or find as drops in that area.

I love encounters which are all about movement. WoW did a perfect job regarding this, Anet should really take a look at other mmos. I’m not sure they do, if I remember correctly one of the devs stated in an interview, that they aren’t looking at other mmos but focus on GW2 only. I think this is a kind of close-minded way to do this.

-) people have to hide behind an obstacle (e.g. the crystals in the Shatterer-battle) to be safe from a 1-hit breath-attack.
-) different parts of the ground are burning in a specific order and people constantly have to move, otherwise the fire 1-hits you. (e.g. similar to the toad-boss in SAB – it was awesome!!)
-) do not use too much adds, it’s just worsening FPS. Instead keep the focus an new attack-patterns of the boss itself. I don’t want to fight waves again, I’m doing this constantly in events.
-) look at the karka-battle; so much good things can be found there. Waypoints far away, devestating attacks which wipe out whole groups, a lot of phases, destructable boss-surface,… too bad I experienced the encounter with about 1-5fps

digiowl.9620:

Rare is 40% above white, exotic 60%. Never mind that even downscaled you are 2 levels higher than the general level of the area. Meaning that you are running with stats up to 2.5 times the ones running with whatever they can buy or find as drops in that area.

Yeah, and this is a big problem imho.

Hm, yea the problem with those world bosses is fact they’re very interesting looking but the fight itself it not very interesting. I see you probably did some stuff with optimizing the game because it lags a bit less (tho I usually get lowest at 20 fps on ultra settings on dragons which is still very smooth) .

But for starters, some bosses should have more HP, like the Jungle Wurm, Frozen Maw (does that thing even have a form? I’ve never seen past that Shaman because he dies too fast), and maybe Fire Elemental. I’m not saying they should be ultra OP and boring like claw of Jormag, but doing something so they wouldn’t die in seconds is a good start.

Now second step, if you are going to increase their HP, make the fight more interesting. If you just increase the HP, it will make fights more boring and longer. I mean basically all you do is spam 1 key at 1 location. Making bosses run around like Megadestroyer would be a good move, because it would break the monotony of standing in 1 spot (not to mention auto-attack just breaks so many times). So, the key is to find balance so that the bosses dont end up too challenging, or take too long like Jormag. I really never do that dragon boss because it’s very annoying.

the design should really be in a way so that people have to use their skills, not only hit 1 all the time.

-) the Shatterer starts attacking with his paws. Hitting really hard. Players have to get 25stacks of cripple on the leg in order to stop this attack and make the leg vulnerable again.
-) have peope use stealth / aoe-stealth skills to avoid certain boss-attacks which 1-hit you.
-) some attacks have to be interrupted (25x interrupt to finally interrupt the attack) – scale the number of interrupts to the number of people participating
-) a bloated creeper (Tequatl’s minions) loses/bleeds some kind of power-serum when he is stacked with 25 bleeds – people need to stand in this colored trace in order to hit very hard. Direct attacks on the boss do little damage. (if you kill the creeper too fast, he’ll explode and you have to wait for the next one to get a power-trace; meanwhile the boss gets enraged and hits much harder).

Edit: in order to get the info, add famous NPCs to the battles. E.g. Rytlock is with the melee crowd near the leg and shouts: “Now!! Cripple him!”
e.g.2 Caithe is the first to put a stealth-field down and shouts: “We have to vanish NOW!!”

etc.

Given how people will simply pew-pew the Claw even tho they barely do damage without the walls down and golems in action, i find such mechanics unlikely to work unless they make the world boss 100% impervious to damage for the duration. I am not talking 1000000 armor here, i am talking big signs saying “invulnerable” on every attempted attack until the condition has been met.

Beyond the scaling issues, most of the fights just need anti-zerg mechanics and reasons to do something other than simply wail on the boss for a few minutes.

Below are some possible mechanics that I think would work –

Jungle Worm – Once the scaling/health issue is fixed, make target switching to the Summoned Husks more important. If the worm eats a husk, give it a lethal burst attack and cause it to take no damage for 5 seconds.

Tequatl – create a huge, very potent, field of poison around the boss, extending at least to where the bone wall spawns. Then give us multiple ways to walk through the poison – for instance, adding an ability to the mannable turrets that creates safe zones on the ground or boxes of portable environmental weapons that protect people in a small radius around the player carrying them (the game has similar weapons in a couple of dungeons). This would give players at least three ways to approach the fight – either use the stationary guns while defending them, focus on creating safe zones so players can get in close or wait for the asura laser to stun him to temporarily remove the poison field.

The Shatterer – The big problem here is that people keep finding places to stand where the group takes no damage and can just zerg at the boss. Up the number of veteran adds and have them path around the boss very fast – and give the dragon an attack that summons low damage crystal bombs on every player standing within 1200 feet of the dragon (that explode after a few seconds and hit anyone around that player) about every 5-10 seconds. This will reward players for using the stationary weapons but still give them a way to move in close to the boss.

Things like this can be done in such a way that the fights are still doable with unorganized groups but still reward strategic thought and even coordination by smaller groups. It could make the fights much more fun without excluding people.

the thing that irritates me most: why does an encounter which isn’t fun at all make it to the live game? Do developers who tested this boring battles really think that it is fun??

what happened to “when it’s ready” or what does ready actually mean?

ColinJohanson.2394:

Edited to add: This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

Add more mobs along with the scaling. For example, Maw: instead of 2 Grawls that 50 people have to furiously try to tag during the Scholar Brogun escort, maybe there can be a few more.

Two Grawls spawn just as SB leaves Krennak’s Homestead, two more spawn when he nears the foot of the mountain, and then two ice elementals spawn near the shrine. This is a bit sparse, to say the least, when there are dozens of players trying to tag for at least a bronze.

During the portal phase, most players start running back towards the shrine before the phase is done because the Shaman goes down about 2 seconds after saying “wut.”

Just fix the wurm as soon as possible. You all know why,
As for the other stuff, I am sure more people like them the way they are. They could use a tweak or two but some of the stuff mentioned would only be for the hardcore/large guild players and alienate the casual player.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Edited to add: This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

Maybe for super huge groups of players, don’t just add zeroes to the enemy’s HP, but add to the encounter as a whole. 50+ players: suddenly there are adds, or now the boss is immune to bleeding, or his aoe also cripples now, or his phases are unpredictable, or now you have to keep NPC X alive too.
Add a new element to the fight that will require a new strategy for the group, thus not only making the fight last longer (ie – more HP, immune to bleeds) but make it more challenging (ie – adds, fear).

Giant Wyrm can spawn like it is now and at some point of its Hp can split up in 2 and have 4 heads (Hydra like Wyrm) with oozes coming out of its 4 mouths poisoning the ground.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

the thing that irritates me most: why does an encounter which isn’t fun at all make it to the live game? Do developers who tested this boring battles really think that it is fun??

what happened to “when it’s ready” or what does ready actually mean?

When the game was first released these now-easy-and-not-fun encounters were considered good. I still remember my first fight with the Shadow Behemoth and the Shatterer (at appropriate levels). For lower level players that experienced these encounters for the first time, it was an epic moment.

Before the free loot change, they were fine as encounters, but they didn’t have people to do them anymore. So instead of being there unused and forgotten, they made them useful, and the idea of the free rares, even for level 80s, made max level players go there and trivialize the encounters, make them laggy, unplaybale and not fun at all.

Ideas for the encounters:

Jungle Worm - dunno. The poor thing dies before I can see it. I don’t even know what its mechanics are.

Shadow Behemoth - I think this encounter could use some of the mechanics like the Shiro encounters in Factions: In one mission (I’m ashamed to say I forget the name), the player group has to find and destroy nodes to remove the shield from the central ritual. In Imperial Sanctum, people get transported into the dungeon path and have to run/fight their way back to the boss. This fight has the potential to be quite nostalgic for people who remember GW’s Underworld.

Fire Elemental - I don’t think this guy’s mechanics need much of a change, it just needs to scale up better. The only thing I might add would be some sort of environmental weapon for new players that don’t happen to have ranged weapons yet. It might be fun if there was some sort of optional Asuran Fire Suppression system in the room that the players could work together to activate.

Frozen Maw - This event chain needs a major overhaul. Escorting the NPC, waves of grawl should spawn in large numbers to take him down (this needs to scale for the 100 or so players that show up). The dragon totem needs mechanics of its own. Make it do something to defend itself! This shaman is supposedly one of the head honchos of the Sons of Svanir, and yet he summons six or nine (I forget) Sons to defend him after the dragon totem is destroyed. If I were one of those summoned, I would’ve peed myself seeing how many players I was about to attack. The portals should not be closeable, and the ice elementals should keep spawning until the shaman is dead. The shaman himself needs to have mechanics more on-level with the guy that spawns at the end of the Dome event chain. He’s actually fun to fight. (As a side note: I find it very funny that the Shaman has a line of dialogue saying “How did you get to me so fast?!?”)

Tequatl - I think this fight could be reworked as a defense-style encounter, where players have to defend the Asuran Megalaser from huge waves of Risen mobs. When the Megalaser fires, it makes Tequatl temporarily vulnerable, at which point players have to push through his bone walls, which leads to the next point. He summons bone walls to protect himself, but everyone can just walk around them. The bone walls need to be an actual obstacle that the horde of players needs to take down. The Risen mobs he spawns could be much higher in number. Right now, you can ignore them, for the most part. I think he should also act similarly to GW’s bone dragons, where anyone close to him is perma-poisoned. That would give supportive players even more of a role in the fight.

Shatterer - Remember the end-of-beta event where players got corrupted? This guy should be able to do that, and players should have a mechanic for curing the corruption. Corrupted players would lose control and their avatars would attack other players until cured. It’s important that the player avatars are AI-controlled while corrupted, so that this does not become PvP, but, make it an actual war! If a player is corrupted for the majority of the fight, they still need credit for the event succeeding, btw. It would be very frustrating if being corrupted cost you any chance at rewards.

Claw of Jormag - Get rid of the ice barricade. It’s a horrible gating mechanic (literally). Get rid of the safe spots on the ledges. His ice waves are good, but they’re predictable. Make it more randomized like the Raving Asura fractal ramp with the bars of electricity. The stronger frostbite debuff is definitely an improvement, as players will have to run in, DPS, and run out to avoid dying. It will also provide a challenge to support players. The ice pillar/bomb golem mechanic should be active through the whole encounter. Since this encounter focuses on getting rid of the dragon’s wings, they should be the DPS focus for the first portion of the fight, to weaken them for the AA cannons. Then, the players can focus on shooting his head and feet.

The biggest improvement you could make to all of these fights would be having the bosses move around as if they’re actually fighting the players. The fact that they stand in one place for so long really detracts from the encounters, and makes it feel like the bosses aren’t alive at all.

Just my 2c. I hope some of it might be useful.

Jski.6180:

BrunoBRS.5178:

Jski.6180:

@ BrunoBRS.5178 that was a fun fight sadly you had to be online to even do it.

The thing is Anet is going back to “fix” the dungeons it seems like dungeons where rushed so they where made simple. Its funny though when Anet fixes these ppl will cry that they are too hard as seen with AC lol i love the forum community.

As for world bosses you must deal with well over 50 ppl in one sport with out lagging out every one. There just a limitation what the mob can do or it will kick every one from that zone.

not on Tri Ultimate you don’t but GW2 is always online, and this fight is more fun with groups anyway, plus the mechanics are the point of the discussion. i feel like this kind of “siege over blade, rotate players controlling the siege by demanding ammo” system would make the dragon fights much more interesting. you need to take down dragons with heavy artillery, not slashing their toenails.

and if they are or not going to revisit all dungeons is beyond the point, we need to suggest what we’d like to see in those possible improvements.

the “too hard” comments are just like early GW2, people were astounded by dungeons and thought AC was nigh impossible. get used to them and they become easier. of course, the new AC has some bugs that make it a bit hard to play certain paths >.>

I though that one fight for MH3 for the wii you had it have it online to play it i guess i was wrong.

As for a suggestion hmmm i would like to see a pre-event mid boss fight such as you must do something to let the fight keep going and if you cant in a set time you fail the event. I do not like when ppl cant get claim but i also do not like ppl when they just run in the very last part for rewards only. Maybe have complex events much like your ammo gathering to fire the canons to make the mob hit able. A counter fly that you need for it to go off to keep the mob from running away. At the same time make the mobs take a great deal less dmg when they become air born well for the ones that do fly during the fight. That and blow back that make ppl get out of the way when the dragon flap there wings.

I guess you could adapted it on the mob: the worm will go underground, the SB will go into a “mist” like form, maw will freeze ppl who do not keep moving and or near fires of some type, the FE will have high toxins on ppl who can get off the low part of the fight and fire to the ones who ranges attk during the “the ground is lava” effect, the golem a use for its warp gate to move ppl into its ranges attk or pull ppl into his ground aoe, the centor i only done this fight once and it was fun i am not sure what to do with it.

Just random ideas but i am fearful that they will prolong the fights too much or make the events too laggly and taxing for pc that are just below the min requirements for the game.

MH3U is the updated 3DS/Wii U version of the game, and every fight can be played offline. on the wii version, yeah, you needed to be online to fight him.

and yeah i like those suggestions, just anything to make the fights less predictable (maybe certain sub-events that may or may not trigger mid-fight depending on how many players are around or on what actions are or not taken by the players) and more dependable on various player actions.

if the fight is engaging and varied (with different things possibly happening during the fight), they can afford to make them longer, because then it doesn’t feel like a chore halfway through. after all, that’s the foundation the monster hunter series is based on: fighting the same enemies over and over, but still having fun because the fights always play out slightly different, be it the enemy’s attacks, the areas it runs to, etc.

Alot of great suggestions here!
These are my top 3 suggestions for World Bosses!

1. Make the Bosses (especially dragons) more dynamic in movement. That means that they should be able to move or fly around more freely instead of standing in one place the hole time. Exampel of mechanics like this is: Monster hunter, Vindictus etc

2. Give them ALOT more health. I think that a battle in this grand scale should atleast take 10 minutes. The feeling when killing a boss after a long fight is realy satisfying. Bet people could disagree about a 10 min fight but i think that it would be more fun for players to accually fight for so long. (if Suggestion nr 3 is implemented)

3. Make attacks more predictable so people know what attack is going to happen but have alot of those attacks. If a boss have maybe 5 different attacks with about 1 or 2 realy dangerouse attacks it would be more skillbased to see the attack and move away accordingly. Example like this is again Monster hunter and Vindictus. (i feel that those 2 games realy nailed the epic boss encounters with alot of devestating attacks and fast tempo)

Thank you for taking your time!
Hope Anet will se this!

I like descentralized tasks that people naturally end up doing because it’s the closest thing.

Like having several spots with some kind of device that keeps the boss’s defenses down, and having to protect them from champions so they stay up, and bringing mateeials and protecting a team repairing them if they break.

That’ll be just one task, but I think that up to 3 could be at the same time.

Protect power supply, bring stuff from a place, protect NPCs here and there…

And when all these small tasks are fluently being kept “up and running”, the boss has its lowest defense and also its strongest angry attacks, and the boss may end up moving from its location to each task, smashing power cores, knocking out NPCs…

For example, Tequatl never trys to jump to the laser. It always stays far from it. He should jump there, try to break it, and if it breaks, an extra mid-battle event would happen to bring NPCs to repair it.

There’s sometime small events like these in some boss battles, but they never get map circles, so many people never notice that they can do that stuff and stuck to hitting the boss.

These keep people spread in the different tasks, and also allow increasing difficulty based on how many people there’s on each task.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll be going through most of these in 2013 and looking at making them more fun and exciting encounters that better scale to support the huge armies of people who mob them.

And of course, we’re also looking into ways to make it so you can see more of those huge mobs of people as well.

Edited to add: This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

Oh Colin; your community is never short of ideas.

Mega events should not crowd players into one area.

Imagine an event that requires the cooperation of people. There should be multiple areas to defend and assault. Think of Lyssa in Malchor’s Leap. Imagine the server communicating with each other in map chat calling for reinforcements and organizing people to assault high value targets.

The boss should be more difficult if not impossible to defeat if certain areas are not captured and controlled. Boss mechanics should be more punishing. Force players to dodge out of red circles; use projectile walls to protect their friends, interrupt boss healing abilities.

I just think the bosses need more attacks and they are in DIRE need of some good phases to go through where they act differently.

For example, The Shatterer. Once he gets to 50% he should start throwing out hits faster and harder as if he’s getting desperate and his animation should change as if his back legs are getting weak and his front torso is wildly lashing out at anyone he can possibly kill. THEN fly off and explode.

That’s just a rough example. But I feel like these bosses just need to act less robotic in any way you can make that possible.

I think it would be cool for the worm event, if there is a certain threshold of people (50?) then more then one of him spawns. Like the main guy spawns and in a circle around him 4 -6 more spawn depending on the number of people. Make the central one invuln until the others are downed, but have hits on them all count toward credit for the event.

It would also be cool to see the mega bosses all have more attacks that interact with more then one person at a time. something to knock people around and keep them moving. Honestly I think grenth is a perfect example if he didn’t have that kitten paper thin npc with him. He’s sufficiently challenging on his own without that.

ColinJohanson.2394:

This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

Here’s my proposal (it applies specifically to the dragon fights):
– Make the dragons too tough to be harmed by player attacks.
– Make them vulnerable to NPC-operated artillery.
– Spread the artillery out in three or so emplacements.
– Have waves of enemies assault each emplacement throughout the fight.
– Have the number and size of waves scale with more players.
– Add veterans and champions as more players participate.
– This forces players to spread out to defend the artillery long enough to win.

Lag and culling could be a problem, but at least the players would be engaged and (theoretically) forced to utilize some measure of teamwork.

Vick.6805:

Shatterer - Remember the end-of-beta event where players got corrupted? This guy should be able to do that, and players should have a mechanic for curing the corruption. Corrupted players would lose control and their avatars would attack other players until cured. It’s important that the player avatars are AI-controlled while corrupted, so that this does not become PvP, but, make it an actual war! If a player is corrupted for the majority of the fight, they still need credit for the event succeeding, btw. It would be very frustrating if being corrupted cost you any chance at rewards.

I just wanted to write that the developers stated they don’t want to make PvP mechanics in PvE, but you have a great solution to this. I love that idea. I would add something though: make the corrupted players invulnerable. This would make sure that the other players heal the corrupted ones, and won’t accidentally kill them.

darkace.8925:

ColinJohanson.2394:

This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

Here’s my proposal (it applies specifically to the dragon fights):
– Make the dragons too tough to be harmed by player attacks.
– Make them vulnerable to NPC-operated artillery.
– Spread the artillery out in three or so emplacements.
– Have waves of enemies assault each emplacement throughout the fight.
– Have the number and size of waves scale with more players.
– Add veterans and champions as more players participate.
– This forces players to spread out to defend the artillery long enough to win.

Lag and culling could be a problem, but at least the players would be engaged and (theoretically) forced to utilize some measure of teamwork.

If I want to fight waves, I go to one of the hundred dynamic events in any zone. When I’m confronting a dragon, I want to fight the dragon itself. Imho.

THIS IS THE BEST :

all 4 of the closest WP’ing become contested on Jormag’s landing. anyone in the area of those 4 wps or closer will be de-buffed by “Jormag’s Ice Breath:” Players receive damage if they dont move closer to confront this icy source. The way to get around it is to WP farther away from Jormag; or kill him yourself.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Edited to add: This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

An Epic Boss needs to be just that… Epic.

Maybe it is time to go back to the basics. Where a Dragon was something to be feared not farmed.

My experience comes from an oldschool paper & pencil RPG which I started playing back in the mid-seventies. When my players came across a Dragon they knew this could very well be, the end of their character.

To put in perspective I will use Tequatl in my vision and I am assuming that Tequatl is a he for simplicity sake.

(Claw attack) – grab a talon full of people and toss them back beyond the mega-laser. Maybe the crush on being picked up by his talon doesn’t kill ya but the impact when you hit the ground might.
(Bite) – Bite may be survivable, Chew less so, but Swallow, not so much. Plus the dead players with their armor digested sliding out the gaping hole in his chest… well that may be a little much.
(Wing Buffet) – used to smack people around on his sides.
(Tail Slap) – for those that think they could sneak up on him.
(Launch) – when he takes off the blast of wind knocks down anyone in a 45 degree arc in front.
(Land) – you better not be there when he comes down, the smush is always fatal!
(Breath Weapon) – take the classic 45 degree cone while sitting on the ground and now shake his head from side to side spewing all the way. Let’s not forget the Breath Strafing from above.
(Crush) – a few hundred tons of rotting flesh are lethal if he decides to bend at the knee and you are underneath him.
(Aura) – if you are 5 levels below him you just run away in fear before you can get even in his visual range.
(Condition) – I like the dripping poison beneath him, that one works fine.
(Minions) – Bloated creepers work nicely, they have caught me snoozing a few times.

(And last but not least): somewhere out in the ocean, beyond where the currents push us back, lies his lair. And in that treasure filled lair of his, resides lots of magic items. How about you let him use some of those magic trophies when he comes to visit that give him some sort of a boon? And one step further, maybe he is just smart enough not to bring the same booster item each time he arrives.

On a personal note: That poor watchtower gets wiped out every time he crashes our party. Let’s get some engineers up there and get that thing structurally shored up. Maybe put a few Ballista and some Arrowcarts up on that tower’s parapet to make Teq think twice next time there is “Something in the Water”

Just some ideas on a few of them.

General:

• You’re allowed to make this open world content hard and fail-able. Seriously, you are. Even if the mechanics are complex, with enough visually noticeable tells and possibly NPCs shouting out things that aren’t as obvious, players can and will figure it out.
• Introduce mechanics to split the zerg and allow players to contribute without necessarily doing DPS to the main boss. Force the players to split up and take out something or activate/support something in another (within viewing distance) area to contribute or be allowed to continue the fight.
• There should be a reason why this epic mob is there, and not just to give a loot pinata to the players.
• Design the event so it takes at least 3-5 minutes of fighting (not counting any non-fighting segments) to complete. Many of these fights are so short their epic-ness is completely overridden by the fact you only see them for <1 minute every hour or three.
• Have some way for the bosses to determine if players are mobbing together…then target those areas.
• Add a “failure in: X:XX” mechanic to the fights like the Guild Bounties. Seriously, let these things fail.

Shatterer:

• Introduce strafing runs for Shatterer while you have to take care of his minions/repair the cannons.
• When he lands, have it produce a crystal shockwave over the main area that either engulfs you in a crystal or knocks you back.
• Introduce another phase he goes into where he spawns four large crystal formations a little bit away that buffs him tremendously so players have to abandon the fight and take those out or die. Meanwhile he’s making his way towards the forward camp, and will take it out (and fail the event) if you don’t.
• One of his scaling attacks should be a Dragon’s Claw type of attack that hits any player in its path.
• Add events to the Kralkatorrik’s Legacy meta event so that it feels closer to the new Orr meta events. Right now the Shatterer feels a little like just another mob in the zone because there’s only a couple events that people expect others to complete and then he spawns.

Tequatl:

• Have the siege weapons do significantly more damage to Tequatl than the players can (introduce a buff to Tequatl that lowers damage from player skills by 20-50%)…until the mega laser fires, which removes that buff and increases their damage.
• Allow players to speed progress of the mega laser by bringing items from the nearby United Arcanist Lab.
• Have the risen minions proceed to another siege weapon after claiming one, or go after spots where players are mobbing together.
• Add event chains to the Danger at Fabled Djannor meta event so it feels more like Tequatl is arriving because you’ve pushed the Risen forces back to the water. Upon failure, risen should swarm back along the chain and wipe out your previously captured locations.

Maw:

• Vastly more health. The fight NEEDS to last longer.
• Break up the fight by forcing players to go back away from the fight and take out more portals or be swarmed by more and more powerful elementals. Make the shaman invulnerable during this time if you have to.

Wurm:

• Again, vastly more health. It needs to live long enough to pull off the mechanics. The health increase from devouring the husks should be massive so players are encouraged to get rid of them. Having a NPC call this fact out is necessary.
• Preferably there should be enough health, and the healing from husks so large, that whatever the scaling is at players cannot not defeat the wurm without taking out at least some of the husks. Taking them all out should speed it up a good bit.
• Some sort of punishment that includes ranged and not just melee. Maybe a powerful, but short retribution buff when devouring husks.
• Since it’s stationary, minions that cause more and more havoc (and also come in from the outside as well as scattered through the fight) as it scales up are useful.
• It’s an animation change, but introduce a new phase after the husk phase with a highly deadly caustic/poison attack that the wurm slowly rotates and uses, causing players to have to stay ahead of it or be downed. Have it be just slower than combat run speed so you don’t actually have to use swiftness to stay ahead (although doing so would give you more opportunity to attack). After it completes a rotation, it stops and summons more husks. Failure to take the husks and wurm out causes the wurm to heal up from devouring the husks and repeat attack…this time faster.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

snip

sounds legit

I agree with the sentiments about meta bosses being hard. I love the reward changes you made, but i personally would be happy to work harder for the same rewards.

Taking out the large luck factor, the guild bounties have some really great mechanics that give you if a satisfied feel when u beat them, (if u r lucky enough to find them). I love the prisoner one for eg….i was almost out of breath for real chasing him!

Jormag – shorten the fight a little, but have it so there is no safe spot to the side when going after the shield in phase 1. Dodging his attacks should be encouraged.

Shatterer – his stomps should have a high dam, large radius aoe. His breTh attack actually should harm players as well as looking cool. I also agree that a bigger build up is needed (eg add in the wall attack event that is there with him flying overhead dropping in the adds)

Behemoth – he could throw ppl around, send out a swamp wave, sweep players aside with fists. Just random ideas really. Hes sooooo cool looking, but an anti climax when he dies so quick.

On the plus side, the centaur in harathi is an epic fight. Death is a real risk and you have a really excellent build up where the army pushes forward. Megadestroyer is the same.

First of all, there shouldn’t be an incentive for level 80s in full exotics to be farming low-level events such as Maw and Golem. Maw Shaman dies in 5 seconds yet gives you the exact same level of reward as defeating Balth / Grenth, how does that make any sense? Rewards need to scale appropriately so that high-level characters are fighting dragons / temples bosses in Orr and are not bouncing between level 1-15 areas all day.

I remember back in Beta, the first time I fought Maw Shaman it blew me away with how difficult yet fun it was, yeah he was overpowered vs. melee but during the encounter people were dying left and right, it was glorious. It’s sad that new players will never be able to experience that in the game’s current state because 50+ max-level characters jump into the zone and melt the guy in 5 seconds, being rewarded with rare loot for doing absolutely nothing but spamming 1.

Teq / Shatterer / Claw need improved scaling, Maw / Shadow / Golem just need to be fighting a reasonable force of players at an appropriate level in the zone they were designed for. If they’re still too easy, bring back beta Shaman.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll be going through most of these in 2013 and looking at making them more fun and exciting encounters that better scale to support the huge armies of people who mob them.

And of course, we’re also looking into ways to make it so you can see more of those huge mobs of people as well.

Edited to add: This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

Get rid of culling. Get rid of culling. Get rid of culling. Get rid of culling. Get rid of culling.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Edited to add: This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

I’m not super far into this game, but one frustration I’ve had with bosses so far is they seem to be little more that high stat damage sponges and I gather from fully leveled friends that this doesn’t change much later on. Personally I think you could go a long way with bosses by giving them unique requirements to be able to harm them. Think like classic arcade games where you had to bait bosses into vulnerable positions or use special things in the environment to weaken them before being able to harm them. This would make it impossible to take down a boss in 3 seconds flat and would go a long way toward making them more challenging and interesting for any number of participants.

I believe that bosses should have telegraphed and avoidable knockdown aoe but it must do no damage

AOE doesnt really scale as number of players goes up since it complete area denial like Genth. However, aoe will give the boss a damage migration mechanic.

A good example of low to no damage aoe is jormag second stage ice push attack. If the player doesnt activate charrzooka shield then the player will be push pack and unable to dps

loseridoit.2756:

I believe that bosses should have telegraphed and avoidable knockdown aoe but it must do no damage

AOE doesnt really scale as number of players goes up since it complete area denial like Genth. However, aoe will give the boss a damage migration mechanic.

A good example of low to no damage aoe is jormag second stage ice push attack. If the player doesnt activate charrzooka shield then the player will be push pack and unable to dps

I’m sorry, but those mechanics add nothing to the fight. All they do is serve to prolong the fight and slightly annoy the players. The bosses need dynamic combat mechanics with real, tangible threats. Running away from fear for a few seconds or being knocked down by a wave of ice carry no real consequences, and thus are all but meaningless.

darkace.8925:

loseridoit.2756:

I believe that bosses should have telegraphed and avoidable knockdown aoe but it must do no damage

AOE doesnt really scale as number of players goes up since it complete area denial like Genth. However, aoe will give the boss a damage migration mechanic.

A good example of low to no damage aoe is jormag second stage ice push attack. If the player doesnt activate charrzooka shield then the player will be push pack and unable to dps

I’m sorry, but those mechanics add nothing to the fight. All they do is serve to prolong the fight and slightly annoy the players. The bosses need dynamic combat mechanics with real, tangible threats. Running away from fear for a few seconds or being knocked down by a wave of ice carry no real consequences, and thus are all but meaningless.

That the whole point. Learn the mechanics of the world boss and learn to avoid it.

Anet could make the bosses have less health to compensate for it.

Annoying players is the whole point of a world boss.

still better than current mechanics of stacking until the boss is dead